


Dulce et Decorum Est?

by scarletastraia



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: M/M, War, battle of the somme, possibly inaccurate history
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-03
Updated: 2016-07-03
Packaged: 2018-07-19 21:31:12
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 589
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7378102
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scarletastraia/pseuds/scarletastraia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An attempt to write a commemorative piece on the 100th anniversary of the Battle of the Somme but it got kind of sidetracked towards the end</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dulce et Decorum Est?

1 July 2016. 

It seems no time has passed at all since the first day our brave young lads stood tall and proud, ready to gun down defences (flimsy, they said) and take back land that was rightfully ours. They shone so bright it was blinding to even look at them (and be reminded of the futures they had yet to fully own, that unreleased potential not yet put to use), here, in the muddy battlefields of the Somme. 

At the very start, the situation looked pretty good – it appeared this would truly be the turning point, where we would strategically infiltrate enemy lines and turn the tide of the war; and we were happy that we could finally end it. We’d had enough of fighting, we said, and we just wanted peace. 

Alas, even after a thousand years of wars and conflicts, we had never quite managed to learn the lesson right: peace was elusive, and never so easy to capture. 

We ourselves started off with smiles; yours initially cheeky, slightly crooked, and vaguely (vaguely) handsome – until bits and pieces started flaking off the mask and we could not disguise anything anymore, could not pretend not to hear screaming and yelling and cries for salvation, quiet prayers muttered in desperation, voices cracking without the lubrication of hope, and above all that, the roar of warfare. 

We did not ask for this, and that is what I tell you when both of us are buckled over in pain, feeling the physical pain of warfare but suffering the emotional pain. We both know this feeble excuse is simply that; it is ineffectual in dispelling even a superficial level of the agony we are put through when our citizens – our children – die for us. They say dulce et decorum est pro patria mori, but surely, there is not much that can be sweet and right about gory mutilation and pointless destruction. Can there? 

Days and weeks and months pass and we begin to think there will not be an end to the way the artillery shells strike the edges of the trenches, flicking mud and dust and blood everywhere. The corpses are indistinguishable from the alive. Is that a sign, you ask. Your eyes, green like spring and growth and healing, bright and hopeful, do not shine, and I know that same stillness is reflected in my own. We can no longer rely on hope. It has not served us well. But still, we continue to try, to appeal to higher powers, to pray, and perhaps, just perhaps, even sinners like us can have salvation – eventually. 

And when it finally ends – it all ends – we are crowned victors, but we do not feel like victors. Europe is tired and broken and so are we. Even you, isolated as you are on your isles, are exhausted, and amongst Nations we know too well we will take a long time to get over the horrors of this war. No more war, we cry, and that is how we try to salvage our remains. 

Even today, we continue to call for peace. But I do not know if that can be maintained anymore. I cannot bear to examine the impacts your reckless (the England I knew would never, ever, possibly have made such a choice) decision has had, and will continue to have, on European unity. What I do know, however, is that you are choosing to leave, yet again, and the next time we meet, it shall be as enemies once more. 

Adieu.

**Author's Note:**

> Apologies for historical inaccuracy!


End file.
